TIMESONLINE: It is scarcely a fortnight since Nancy Larson announced that after much agonising — and despite a “heartbreaking” last-minute plea from Chelsea Clinton — her super-delegate vote would go to Barack Obama. Now she is not so sure.
“Our role is to keep gauging and re-gauging what the public wants. Although I’m comfortable with the decision I made, there is nothing to stop me changing my mind,” said this Minnesotan yesterday.
She cited how the controversy of Mr Obama’s pastor, the Rev Jeremiah Wright, “keeps cropping up” and said that his comments over bitter small-town Americans “may bother some voters”, saying: “We have to ask ourselves who will be able to go the distance when it counts in November. We have a big responsibility.”
Ms Larson is one of the 795 members of the Democratic Party elite — the super-delegates — who could yet wrest the nomination away from Mr Obama, who is so close to winning this prize that he can almost touch it.
No one doubts that he will claim the larger slice of elected delegates. Mr Obama has also had the overwhelming bulk of super-delegate pledges over the past couple of months. Even in this traumatic week for him, he has had six endorsements, compared with four for Hillary Clinton.
Yet almost 300 super-delegates stubbornly sit on the fence. Some are said to fear retribution from the Clintons, who are not shy of reminding them of favours done. The Governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson, has already been denounced as a “Judas” for pledging himself to Mr Obama.
Others, particularly those sitting on thin majorities in Congress, hesitate because they do not want to alienate any section of the Democratic electorate. And, even though dozens of Congressmen have privately made up their minds to back Mr Obama, many appear to be waiting for proof that he really is the candidate who will deliver them the White House.
Successive missed opportunities to finish off Mrs Clinton — in New Hampshire, in California on Super Tuesday, in Ohio last month and then in Pennsylvania last week — have reinforced doubts about whether he can transcend divisions of race, class and age that scar American society.
The extraordinary spectacle Mr Wright made of himself this week has opened up further questions about the judgment and, perhaps, honesty of a candidate who says that in 20 years of sitting in the pastor’s pews he never heard him deliver such “rants”. Undecided Democratic Elite Remind Barack Obama that Victory is Not in the Bag >>> By Tom Baldwin in Washington | May 1, 2008
THE INDEPENDENT:
On the Road with Bubba Bill as Clintons Court Blue-Collar Votes >>> By Leonard Doyle in Elkin, North Carolina | May 1, 2008
THE GUARDIAN:
Controversy Causes Obama to Lose Ground >>> By Ewen MacAskill in Indianapolis | May 1, 2008
THE TELEGRAPH:
Barack Obama Turns to Wife to Win Back Voters: Barack Obama has turned to his wife, Michelle, in an effort to woo working class voters after being cast as an elitist in the race for the White House >>> By Alex Spillius in Indianapolis | May 2, 2008
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